Word: kortlandt
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After long years of studying chimpanzees, University of Amsterdam Zoologist Adriaan Kortlandt, 49, is convinced that they do not live up to their full potential. Although chimps in captivity often construct crude shelters and mimic many of man's other activities, their behavior in the wild seems far less advanced. Since they are endowed with many human-like qualities, Kortlandt asks, "why have chimpanzees in the course of their evolution not achieved a more human way of life and a corresponding level of culture...
...answer, he believes, is that chimps are "dehumanized beings," reduced to a more primitive way of life by their forest environment. But chimps have not always been forest dwellers. Long ago, says Kortlandt, they inhabited African open plains, walked upright and used crude weapons to defend themselves effectively against carnivorous enemies. But when man's early ancestors developed spears and learned to kill at a distance, the chimps retreated into the dense rain forest. "In the forest," Kortlandt says, "the semihuman element in the behavior of apes faded away to a large extent...
Returning to Amsterdam, Kortlandt organized a three-man expedition to Guinea, equipped it with cameras and an experimental tool of his own design: a stuffed leopard animated by a windshield-wiper mechanism that moved its head and tail. Hiding in the bush, Kortlandt's crew waited until a group of about 30 chimps passed nearby and then pulled the mock leopard into view. "Hell broke loose," says Zoologist Jo Van Orshoven, a member of the expedition. "With enormous yelling and hooting they started to attack the leopard in an organized and coordinated...